Marion a Farmer--Volunteers in the Cherokee Campaign.
From the readiness with which young Marion yielded himself to the
entreaties of his mother, and resumed the occupations of agriculture,
and from the quiet and persevering industry with which he pursued them
for a period of nearly or quite ten years, it might be supposed that
the impatience and restlessness of mood, which had formerly led him
to revolt at the staid drudgery of rural life, had been entirely
extinguished in his bosom. But such was not the case. It was only
subdued, and slumbering for a season, ready to awaken at the first
opportunity, with all the vigor and freshness of a favorite passion.
That opportunity was at hand. Events were in progress which were to
bring into the field, and prepare by the very best sort of training, for
the most noble trials, the great military genius of the Partisan. At the
opening of the year 1759, the colony of South Carolina was on the eve
of an Indian war. The whole frontier of the Southern Provinces,
from Pennsylvania to Georgia, was threatened by the savages, and the
scalping-knife had already begun its bloody work upon the weak and
unsuspecting borderers. The French had been conquered upon the Ohio.
Forts Frontenac and Duquesne had fallen. British and Provincial valor,
aided by strong bodies of Cherokee warriors, had everywhere placed the
flag of Britain above the fortresses of France. With its elevation, the
Indian allies of the French sent in their adhesion to the conquerors;
and, their work at an end, the Cherokee auxiliaries of Britain prepared
to return to their homes, covered with their savage trophies, and
adequately rewarded for their services. It happened, unfortunately,
that, while passing along the frontiers of Virginia, the Cherokees, many
of whom had lost their horses during the campaign, supplied themselves
rather unscrupulously from the pastures of the colonists. With
inconsiderate anger, the Virginians, forgetting the late valuable
services of the savages, rose upon their footsteps, slew twelve or
fourteen of their warriors, and made prisoners of as many more. This
rash and ill-advised severity aroused the nation. The young warriors
flew to arms, and pouring their active hordes upon the frontier
settlements, proceeded to the work of slaughter, without pausing to
discriminate between the offending and the innocent. The emergency was
pressing, and Governor Lyttleton, of South Carolina, called out the
militia of the province. They were required to rendezvous at the
Congarees, about one hundred and forty miles from Charleston. To this
rendezvous Francis Marion repaired, in a troop of provincial cavalry
commanded by one of his brothers.* But he was not yet to flesh his
maiden valor upon the enemy. The prompt preparation of the Carolinians
had somewhat lessened the appetite of the savages for war. Perhaps their
own preparations were not yet sufficiently complete to make them hopeful
of its issue. The young warriors were recalled from the frontiers, and
a deputation of thirty-two chiefs set out for Charleston, in order to
propitiate the anger of the whites, and arrest the threatened invasion
of their country. Whether they were sincere in their professions, or
simply came for the purpose of deluding and disarming the Carolinians,
is a question with the historians. It is certain that Governor Lyttleton
doubted their sincerity, refused to listen to their explanations, and,
carrying them along with him, rather as hostages than as commissioners
in sacred trust, he proceeded to meet the main body of his army, already
assembled at the Congarees. The treatment to which they were thus
subjected, filled the Cherokee deputies with indignation, which, with
the usual artifice of the Indian, they yet contrived to suppress. But
another indiscreet proceeding of the Governor added to the passion which
they felt, and soon baffled all their powers of concealment. In resuming
the march for the nation, he put them into formal custody, placed
a captain's guard over them, and in this manner hurried them to the
frontiers. Whatever may have been the merits of this movement as a mere
military precaution, it was of very bad policy in a civil point of view.
It not only degraded the Indian chiefs in their own, but in the eyes of
their people. His captives deeply and openly resented this indignity
and breach of faith; and, brooding in sullen ferocity over the disgrace
which they suffered, meditated in silence those schemes of vengeance
which they subsequently brought to a fearful maturity. But though thus
impetuous and imprudent, and though pressing forward as if with the most
determined purposes, Lyttleton was in no mood for war. His policy seems
to have contemplated nothing further than the alarm of the Indians.
Neither party was exactly ripe for the final issue. The Cherokees needed
time for preparation, and the Governor, with an army ill disciplined and
imperfectly armed, found it politic, when on the very confines of
the enemy's country, to do that which he might very well have done
in Charleston--listen to terms of accommodation. Having sent for
Attakullakullah, the wise man of the nation, who had always been the
staunch friend of the whites, he made his complaints, and declared his
readiness for peace;--demanding, however, as the only condition on
which it could be granted, that twenty-four men of the nation should be
delivered to him, to be disposed of as he should think proper, by death
or otherwise, as an atonement for that number of Carolinians, massacred
in the late foray of the savages. A treaty was effected, but with some
difficulty, on these terms. Compliance with this requisition was not
so easy, however, on the part of the Cherokee chiefs. The moment it was
understood, the great body of their people fled to the mountains,
and the number of hostages could be secured only by the detention
of twenty-two of those chiefs already in the Governor's custody. The
captives were placed, for safe keeping, at the frontier fort of Prince
George.
* Judge James' Life of Marion, p. 17.--
But the natural sense of the savage is not inferior to that by which
the laws of the civilized are prescribed, in their dealings with one
another. The treaty thus extorted from their leaders, while in a state
of duress, was disregarded by the great body of the nation. They watched
their opportunity, and, scarcely had the Governor disbanded his forces,
when the war-whoop resounded from the frontiers.
Fort Prince George was one of the most remote of a chain of military
posts by which the intercourse was maintained between the several white
settlements of the seaboard and the interior. It stood on the banks of
the Isundiga River, about three hundred miles from Charleston, within
gunshot of the Indian town of Keowee. This post, to which the Cherokee
hostages were carried, was defended by cannon, and maintained by a small
force under Colonel Cotymore. It was in this neighborhood, and, as it
were in defiance of this force, that the war was begun. Fourteen whites
were massacred at a blow, within a mile of this station. This was
followed up by a stratagem, by which Occonostota, one of the principal
warriors, aimed to obtain possession of the fort. Pretending to have
something of importance to communicate to the commander, he dispatched
a woman who had usually obtained access to the station, to solicit an
interview with him. This was to take place on the banks of the river.
Meanwhile the savage prepared his ambush. Cotymore imprudently assented
to the meeting, and, attended by Lieutenants Bell and Foster, walked
down towards the river, from the opposite side of which Occonostota
addressed him. While they spoke, the Indian was seen to wave a bridle
over his head. This was the signal agreed upon with the ambushed
warriors. At this signal they rose and poured in their fire. Cotymore
was slain on the spot, and his companions wounded. But the savages
failed to get possession of the fort. Suspecting a concerted movement
among the hostages, by which they would cooperate with the assailing foe
without, the officer in command of the fort gave orders to secure them
with irons. The attempt to obey these orders ended in a bloody tragedy.
The Indians resisted with arms, and, stabbing three of the soldiers, so
exasperated the rest, already excited by the murder of their captain,
that they fell upon the miserable wretches and butchered them to a man.
This unhappy event, completing what the indiscreet severities of
Governor Lyttleton had begun, united the whole nation of Cherokees in
war. There had been a strong party favorable to peace, and friendly to
the whites. This unfortunate proceeding involved the loss of this party.
The hostages were among their chief men, and scarcely a family in the
nation but lost a relative or friend in their massacre. They were now
unanimous for battle; and, numerous parties rushing simultaneously down
upon the frontiers, baffled the courage and prevented the flight of the
fugitives. They fell without distinction upon men, women and children.
"Such as fled to the woods and escaped the scalping-knife, perished
of hunger.... Every day brought fresh accounts to the capital of their
ravages, murders and desolations. But while the back settlers looked to
their governor for relief, the small-pox raged to such a degree in
town that few of the militia could be prevailed upon to leave their
distressed families to serve the public."* Lyttleton, meanwhile, by whom
all the mischief was occasioned, was made Governor of Jamaica, and the
charge of the colony devolved on William Bull, a native--"a man of
great integrity and erudition." In the almost hopeless condition of the
province, her sisters, North Carolina and Virginia, raised seven troops
of rangers for the frontiers; and Colonel Montgomery, afterwards Earl of
Eglintoun, was dispatched from Canada, with a battalion of Highlanders
and four companies of Royal Scots. Before the end of April, 1760, the
camp of rendezvous for a new invasion of the Cherokee territories was
established at Monk's Corner. Meanwhile, the health of Carolina had
undergone some improvement, and the gentlemen of the country were not
idle. They turned out in force as volunteers, and under the spirited
direction of Governor Bull, the whole disposable force of the province
was put in requisition. Among these, it is not so sure, but is believed,
that Francis Marion once more made his appearance as a volunteer. From
what we know of his character, his temperament, and that unsatisfied
craving which he seems to have shown from the beginning for such
excitements, it is reasonable to infer his presence in the field. But,
though asserted by tradition, we confess that the records are silent
on the subject. Unsatisfactory as at that period they generally are, on
this point they are particularly so; and but that his share in this
war, before its final conclusion, was not only unquestionable but
conspicuous, we should pass over the campaign of Montgomery, with a
simple reference to its results.
* Hewatt's Hist. S.C.--
The Cherokees, meanwhile, were not unobservant of the preparations and
approaches of the Carolinians. They gathered themselves up for defence,
and in silence matured their half civilized, half primitive modes of
warfare. This people, at the period of which we write, were a people of
very superior endowments and resources to any of the neighboring savage
nations. If less warlike, in the simple sense of the word, than their
rivals the Creeks, they were really more to be feared, as it was in
consequence of their superior civilisation that they had lost some
of their brute ferocity. If they were less reckless, they were better
skilled; if less frantic in their fury, they coupled it with a wary
vindictiveness which rendered the blow more fatal when it fell. The
advances which they had made in civilisation had naturally increased
their numbers; while the novel tastes by which their wandering habits
were diminished, had necessarily added to their love of country, in
adding to the resources and improvements by which its comforts and
delights were increased. Thus, neither degraded by the lowest condition
in which we find the human animal, nor enervated by the superior
luxuries to which he may attain, the Cherokee was perhaps at this time
in possession of his greatest vigor; not very remote, in his moral and
physical condition, from the Roman when he overcame his Etrurian and
Sabine neighbors. The Cherokees occupied a country equally broad and
beautiful. It lay in fertile valleys, green meadows, sunny slopes, and
mighty forests, along the sides of lofty summits, that circled their
extensive territory with natural fortresses of giant grandeur. Spreading
from the Broad, or Cherokee river, beyond the Tennessee and the
Savannah, it comprised every variety of soil and surface, and while
adapted in a high degree to the hands of the agriculturist, seemed
almost as easily made secure against the footsteps of invasion. Its
apparent securities had made them insolent. Their mountain recesses had
never known the presence of this foe. Their fruits and fields, their
villages and towns, with the exception of a district that lay upon the
Atlantic slopes, were generally fenced in, and admirably protected,
by wild and rugged masses of rocky mountains, natural defences,
impenetrable, unless through certain passes which a few determined
hearts might easily make good against twenty times their number. But
the numerical force of this great aboriginal people, seemed of itself
sufficiently strong to promise security to their country. At the time
of Montgomery's invasion they had no less than sixty-four towns and
villages. In an emergency, they could send six thousand warriors
into the field. Many of these were armed with the weapons of European
warfare--were accustomed to that warfare, and were thus doubly prepared
to encounter the enemy in whose ranks they had received their
best military lessons. Such a force very far exceeded that of the
Carolinians. Mustering but two thousand men, Col. Montgomery found it
advisable to urge his march upon the nation with equal celerity and
caution. Having reached a place called Twelve-mile River, within twenty
miles of the Indian town of Estatoee, he advanced by night upon it,
secretly, and with a view to its surprise. In his march, surrounding the
town of Little Keowee, not a warrior of the Cherokees escaped the sword.
His success was less complete at Estatoee. The Indians, apprised of his
approach, with few exceptions, succeeded in making their escape; but the
town, consisting of more than two hundred houses, and well stored with
corn, hogs, poultry and ammunition, perished in the flames. Shugaw Town
and every other settlement in the "Lower Nation", shared the same
fate. The lightning-like rapidity of the march had taken the savages
everywhere, in this part of the country, by surprise. They fled rather
than fought, and while they lost everything in the shape of property,
but few of them were slain. They sought for shelter among their more
numerous and better protected brethren of the mountains; a people
neither so easily approached, nor so easily overcome.
Montgomery, having finished this part of his work so successfully,
hurried on to the relief of Fort Prince George, which, from the time
when their Chiefs were so cruelly butchered within its walls, had
been closely invested by a formidable force of Cherokees. The fort
was relieved. The Indians fled at his approach; and, thinking that the
severe chastisement which he had inflicted upon them, had inclined their
hearts to peace, the General of the Carolinians paused in his progress,
to give them an opportunity to sue for it, as the former friends and
allies of the English. But he had mistaken the stubborn nature of his
foe. They were not sufficiently humbled, and it was resolved to march
upon the "middle settlements". To this task, that which had been
performed was comparatively easy. They were now to enter upon a
different country, where the Indians were better prepared for them--nay,
where they HAD prepared for them,--in all probability, to the neglect of
the lower towns. Toilsome and full of peril was this march. Dismal and
dense was the wilderness which they were now to penetrate. Rugged paths,
narrow passes, gloomy thickets and dark ravines, encountered them
in their hourly progress, calling for constant vigilance and the
maintenance of all their courage. Rivers, fordable in unfrequent
places and overlooked by precipitous banks on either side, crowned most
commonly by dense and intricate masses of forest, through which and
without a guide, our little army was compelled to pass,--presented
opportunities for frequent ambush and attack, in which, very inferior
forces, if properly commanded, might, with little danger to themselves,
overwhelm and utterly destroy an advancing enemy. It was in such a
region that the Cherokees made their first and formidable stand. Within
five miles of Etchoee, the nearest town of the middle settlements, the
army of Montgomery approached a low valley, clothed with a thicket
so dense that the soldiers could scarcely discern objects three paces
ahead. Through this thicket ran a muddy river, enclosed between steep
banks of clay. This passage, where but few men could act in unison, was
that through which it became necessary that the army should proceed.
It was the very spot, which, over all others, a sagacious warrior
would choose in which to place an ambush, or meet a superior assailant.
Montgomery knew his enemy, and prepared for the encounter. Captain
Morrison, commanding a company of rangers, native marksmen and well
acquainted with the forest--was sent forward to scour the thicket. His
advance was the signal for battle. Scarcely had he entered upon the
dismal passage when the savages rose from their hiding-places and poured
in a severe fire. Morrison, with several of his men, perished at
the first discharge. They were sustained by the light Infantry and
Grenadiers, who boldly advanced upon the wood in the face of the
invisible foe. A heavy fire followed on both sides, the Cherokees, each
with his eye upon his man, the Carolinians aiming at the flash of the
enemy's guns. The pass was disputed by the savages with a degree of
conduct and courage, which left the issue doubtful. The necessity was
apparent for extraordinary effort. The Royal Scots, who were in the
rear, were now pushed forward to take possession of a rising ground on
the right, while the Highlanders were marched forward to the immediate
support of the Infantry and Grenadiers. This movement had the effect of
bringing the enemy into close action. The bayonet stirred and laid
bare the thicket. The woods resounded with the shouts and yells of
the Cherokees, but they no longer fell with terror upon the ear of
the whites. They had grown familiar. The savages yielded slowly as the
bayonet advanced. Suffering severely as they fled, they yet displayed
the native obstinacy of their race,--turning upon the pursuer when they
could, availing themselves of tree or thicket to retard, by shot or
stroke, the assailants; and, even in flight, only so far keeping ahead
of the bayonet as to avoid its stroke. As he beheld this, Montgomery
changed the head of his army, and advanced upon the town of Etchoee,
which it had been their purpose to defend, and from which they now
strove to divert him. This movement alarmed them for their wives and
children. Their retreat became a flight; and, satisfied with having
inflicted upon them this measure of punishment, the British General
prepared to march back to Fort Prince George.
This decision was the result of his exigencies. The situation of his
army was neither a safe nor an agreeable one. The victory was with
the Carolinians, yet the affair was very far from decisive in its
consequences. The enemy had only retired from one advantageous position
to another. They waited his approach only to renew a conflict in which
even victory might be without its fruits. To gain a battle, unless a
final one, was, with a force so small as his, a matter of very doubtful
advantage. He was already encumbered with his wounded, to furnish horses
for whom, he was compelled to discard, and to destroy, a large quantity
of the provisions necessary for the army. What remained was measured
with a nice reference to their absolute wants on the return march to
Prince George. Under these suggestions of prudence the retreat was
begun. It was conducted with admirable regularity. The Cherokees,
meanwhile, hung upon the retiring footsteps of the invaders, annoying
them to the utmost of their power. Sixty miles of mountainous country
were traversed in this manner, and under various hardships, with a
skill and intrepidity which confer the highest credit upon the English
captain. A large train of wounded was brought to the frontier without
the loss of a man.
We have admitted an uncertainty as to the presence of Marion in this
campaign. It would be impertinent and idle, therefore, to speculate upon
his performances, or the share which he might have taken in its events.
Tradition simply assures us that he distinguished himself. That, if
present, he did his duty, we have no question; and, enduring with
becoming resolution the worst severities of the march, proved himself
possessed of the first great requisite for soldiership in Indian
warfare.